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the publication of this series a “shameful act,” and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
suggested in a May 2006 ABC News interview that existing law permitted the
administration to prosecute.26 The Washington Post’s Dana Priest was also condemned by
the administration for revealing the existence of secret CIA prisons in foreign countries;
this story, also based on classified information, had been leaked by a CIA employee who
was subsequently fired.
Ultimately, no legal action was taken against the reporters or newspapers who published
these leaks, and leading newspapers continue to print probing stories on U.S. policies in
Iraq and the war on terrorism generally. Even so, such incidents undoubtedly serve as fuel
for the debate over the boundaries between investigative, watchdog journalism and the
media’s responsibility not to undermine national security.

Confidentiality of sources and shield laws. As discussed previously, American journalists
have never had an absolute right to protect the confidentiality of their
sources.27 However, in recent years a number of high-profile cases involving major news
outlets and key political players have drawn more serious attention to this issue.
The best-known incident occurred in the summer of 2005, when New York Times reporter
Judith Miller was jailed for 85 days for refusing to turn over her notes or to testify before a
federal grand jury in a case involving the possibly illegal disclosure of the identity of CIA
employee Valerie Plame Wilson (usually called Valerie Plame). Miller, who did not directly
cover the Plame story, eventually agreed to testify after being encouraged to do so by her
source, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. In the
same case, Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper was threatened with jail for
initially refusing to testify about his source, who was also Libby. Cooper similarly testified
after Libby granted him a waiver.
In another major case, a federal judge held Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus in
contempt for refusing to reveal his sources for articles about Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear
scientist charged with espionage. Lee had accused government officials of leaking his
personnel files to the press and sued the government. Four other reporters were also cited
for contempt in the case and escaped prosecution only when Lee settled out of court.
The Plame and Lee cases demonstrated that journalists have no clear right to protect their
confidential sources. This became particularly evident when the Supreme Court refused to
hear appeals from any of the news organizations involved. However, the ambiguity of the
issue has also been demonstrated in lesser-known cases unrelated to national security
issues. For example, in 2004 Rhode Island television reporter Jim Taricani was fined,
charged with contempt of court, and sentenced to four months of house arrest for failing
to reveal a source.28 Separately, a judge in September 2006 jailed two San Francisco
Chronicle journalists in a criminal case involving alleged steroid use by professional
athletes, after the journalists published a story based on leaked grand jury testimony. The
charges against the reporters were dropped in March 2007, when the source of the leak
came forward.29 In another case, freelancer and video blogger Josh Wolf was jailed in
August 2006 after he refused to surrender a videotape of an anarchist demonstration to
judicial authorities. Wolf was released in April 2007 after spending 226 days in jail, a U.S.
record.30
In a positive step following the Miller case, members of Congress proposed legislation that
would shield reporters from the compulsion to reveal confidential sources. The first of
these proposals, a 2005 bill, would have granted reporters an almost complete guarantee

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